The New Los Angeles Sentinels

The Animated Series

Red Mantle

Possessed Pact-Maker

Description:

Mental Domination: As a partially psychic entity, The Red Mantle is able to project his will outwards, ensnaring and dominating others. He commands these people telepathically, and can perceive anything they perceive. This control is absolute; those so dominated have no chance to resist. However, the domination only works on the weak-willed. Those with too strong of personalities resist completely and cannot be ensnared or controlled.

Gestalt Mind: The Red Mantle is composed of the minds of Rohan Hakelbarend and and the Dutch mystic Canidar. As such, he knows everything that both men once knew, and has their combined mental capacity, thinking prowess, willpower, etc. This makes The Red Mantle capable of thinking several times faster than most people, and grants him incredible resistance against psychic powers. He is also cunning with a very strong sense of self, making it difficult to deceive, connive, trick, or persuade him.

Ritualist: As the body of The Red Mantle is Hakelbarend’s, he is incapable of using the Learned Spellcasting capabilities of his Canidar-self, The Red Mantle is an accomplished ritualist, able to conduct ritual magic with skill and ease thanks to his enormous knowledge of arcane lore.

Bio:

Rohan Hakelbarend always had a fascination with magic. Although he did not possess the bloodline to become a mage himself, he immersed himself in arcane culture whenever he could. After he was accepted to UCLA, he signed up for every Occult Studies class he could, hoping to one day become a professor of arcane lore.

Once he got his hands on some real arcane lore from the university library, he discovered one of the darker sides of magic. He read accounts and stories of individuals who made pacts and bargains with entities of great magical power; demons, spirit-gods, and entities Man Was Not Meant To Know. They were typically intended as parables about greed, but Rohan saw them differently. In each story, he saw the mistakes of the pact-maker, and vowed to do things differently. He spent years researching rituals, carefully planning his requests for power in the proper syntax to avoid any pitfall he could think of.

Eventually, he decided to put his plan into action. The only ritual he could cast could not force any entity to him, only those willing to bargain, and forced his request into a simple statement. He had prepared for such an eventuality, and cast his request into the arcane ether.

Kahlir answered the call. The demonic Arckduke stood before him. Rohan knew that, as a minion of Culbron, he was incapable of making a dishonest pact. So, simple request in hand, he asked Kahlir for an artifact of power; The Red Mantle Of Canidar, a cloak that, according to his research, was woven by a Dutch mage in medieval Europe, and was made to enhance spellcasting prowess.

Kahlir granted Rohan’s request, in exchange for his allegiance. Two days after the summoning, the cape appeared in a box on Rohan’s doorstep. He donned it eagerly, as he felt the power flow through him.

Unfortunately for Rohan, his research was not completely accurate. While the Dutch mage Canidar did indeed weave the cloak with potent magic, it was in a bid for immortality. The mantle held the powerhungry mage’s psychic essence, allowing him to possess Rohan, as well as force his mental domination on the weak willed. Rohan fought back as best he could, but most of his mind was subsumed by Canidar, leaving only chunks of his former self remaining.

Still bound by his pact with Kahlir, Rohan/Canidar took the name The Red Mantle, and became one of the villains forming The Aryan Demonhood. The Red Mantle does not cleave to Aryan ideology, but he has no qualms working with his allies who do.

After being captured and sent to Twin Towers, the Red Mantle artifact was locked in a secure vault while Rohan was put into the prison proper. Seperated from the cloak, Rohan remained in a catatonic stupor, his mind split in half between his body and his artifact.

When Vanguard’s post mortem attack on the city destroyed Twin Towers, Rohan instinctively dug through the remains until he found the cloak. His mind reunited once again, he re-assumed his villainous persona.